A couple of years ago there was a move afoot to try to get the cable companies to provide an “ala carte” kind of service.
You would pay, let’s say, $30 a month for up to 8 channels from list A and up to 3 channels from list B.
Cable companies fought it tooth and nail and insisted on keeping packaged programming.
You reap what you sow.
We can sort of understand why.
If they had to go ala carte, then didn’t get enough subs willing to pay extra for the Midget Tossing Network to enable them to earn a profit, then they’d have to disappoint all those dozens of subs by dropping MTN.
It would be a tragedy.
(Should that be the Little Person Tossing Network? Don’t want to be unPC, you know.)
This is why they fought it. Your bill is divvied up so the networks get about $5 a month. Each network has about 10 other channels. Viacom has VH1, CBS, MTV, Nickelondeon, comedy channel and a few others. Time Warner has CNN, Headline News, Turner, sports channels etc. Disney, Fox, MBC have at least 10 each including sports channels.
Well let’s say a conservative wants Fox, Fox Business and Speed TV. This would KILL the lib networks. Fox ain’t so hot either with the Saudi connection and Prince Al Waleed has deals with ALL 6 networks. Bloomberg is #6 and why do you think he approved the 911 mosque?
They all want access to Islamic markets as well because there are 1.9 billion people and some have a lot of money. You wonder who the secretive elites are destroying America? Start hgere with these 6 networks.
This is the underlying issue in the infamous dispute between the New York Yankees and Cablevision that surfaces every couple of years when the YES Network contract comes up for renewal. For some reason Cablevision is at the center of a lot of these disputes (they just had a recent one involving FOX, too), which tells me that they have a pretty good idea about what exactly they think their customers are willing to pay for.